Lorne Greene, from the television series 'Bonanza,' rides as one of the grand marshals in the 1964 Nevada Day Parade.

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Mike Shaughnessy once joked to a Rotary club that the reason politicians were put at the front of the Nevada Day Parade was that it was better to put the horses' behinds ahead of the horses. The quip made the Reno paper the next day and earned Shaughnessy an early morning call from then-Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, who was notorious for reading people the riot act.

"He said 'that is the funniest damned thing I've ever read,'" laughed Carson City's Shaughnessy, who first participated in the Nevada Day Parade in 1938, not long before his third birthday.